Speaking & Honors

Honors

  • Best Special Section, Second Place, Society for Features Journalism, 2023 
  • National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE), Best Multi-Platform Package or Series – Real Estate, 2023 
  • Award of Excellence: Story Page Design, Society for News Design, 2020
  • Edward R. Murrow Award Investigative Reporting, Large Market Radio,  2020
  • Regional Murrow Award Investigative Reporting, 2020
  • Driehaus Award for Investigative Reporting (1st in 2018), (3rd in 2019)
  • Excellence in Financial Journalism Awards (Local and Public Service Reporting), New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants 2018
  • Best Data Journalism, Peter Lisagor Awards, 2018
  • National Headliner Award, News series in daily newspapers with daily circulation over 100,000,  2018
  • Gerald Loeb Award(Local), UCLA Anderson School of Management, 2018
  • Knight Chair Award, Illinois Press Association, 2018
  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist (Local), The Pulitzer Prize,  2018
  • Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism, Nieman Foundation 2017
  • Deutscher Reporter Preis for Innovation, 2016 
  • Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow, 2016
  • First Place: Data Journalism, Education Writers Association Awards, 2015
  • Fellow, “Covering the U.S. Visa System in Your Own Backyard” Robert R. McCormick Foundation/ The Poynter Institute, 2015 
  • Outstanding Overall Senior of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, 2013
  • 1st Place: SPJ Region 4 Mark of Excellence Award -TV General Reporting, 2013
  • One of 20 students selected for the Online News Association Student Newsroom 2013 where I wrote about Storify, social media and earning my black belt 
  • One of 12 student reporters for Excellence in Journalism (EIJ) News 2013 (Society of Professional Journalists, Radio Television Digital News Association)  
  • Recipient of Scripps Howard Foundation Multimedia Grant, Jesse and Ruth Zousmer Scholarship, Norman H. Dohn Scholarship-Central Ohio SPJ chapter scholarship and the Ford Scholarship in  Journalism

Speaker/Trainer 

  • Spring National College Media Convention (New York, New York), March 2017: “Making it there”
  • NICAR (Jacksonville, Florida), March 2017: “Structuring your data the right way the first time” —> presentation and Panel: “Collaborating with the Competition” 
  • Workshop (Berlin, Germany), January 2017: “Finding Stories Using Data” —> presentation
  • DDJ Essen Meetup (Essen, Germany), November 2016: Lightning Talk: presentation 
  • Mozilla Festival (London, UK), October 2016: Lightning Talk: presentation  and Workshop:  presentation
  • Uncovering Asia (Kathmandu, Nepal), September 2016: Workshop: Using Open Refine to Clean Data
  •  “Three Things You Should Keep in Mind While Collecting Your Own Data” –> presentation
  • Hacks/Hackers BA Media Party (Buenos Aires, Argentina), August 2016: Keynote: presentation  and Workshop:  presentation
  • SRCCON (Portland, Oregon), July 2016: The good and bad of newsroom on-boarding processes (and how can we make them better) 
  • News Impact Summit (Berlin, Germany), July 2016: presentation
  • Workshop (Berlin, Germany),  June 2016:  presentation 
  • Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference (New Orleans, Louisiana), June 2016:  repo
  • DataHarvest (Mechelen, Belgium), June 2016: repo
  • Hacks/Hackers (Berlin, Germany), May 2016:Investigating College Sports
  • IV Jornadas de Periodismo de Datos (Madrid, Spain), May 2016:  repo
  • International Journalism Festival (Perugia, Italy), April 2016:The Grammar of Graphics: Designing and Transforming Data workshop –> workshop repo
  • NICAR (Atlanta, Georgia),  March 2015: “Key data for investigating universities”
  • Northern Kentucky University Digital Transformations in News (Highland Heights, Kentucky), March 2014: “How to tell stories with data and visuals”
  • SPJ Region 4 Conference (Dayton, Ohio),  April 2013: “On the Hunt: Internships”

Other teaching workshops 

  • Guest taught/ lectured at: University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism Program, FOIA Fest Chicago, Indiana University Access Workshop, Duke University,  American University,  U.S. China Education Trust, DePaul University
  • Correctiv lunch time talks: using data for investigations, Excel 1 & 2, newsroom on-boarding and off-boarding 
  • The Chronicle of Higher Education: taught copy editors how to use SQL, held data trainings for reporters
  • E.W. Scripps School of Journalism: workshops on data  (SQL, data cleaning)

Other

  • Participant of the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at CUNY and Covering the U.S. Visa System in Your Own Backyard
  • Graduate of Second City Improv School

Affiliations

  • Proud member of IRE and SAJA
  • AAJA LA Board member
  • AAJA JCamp 2008 alum